After the disappointment received for not being able to speak with Octavian Augustus, I decide to spend a weekend in Pompeii.
We are in the year 79 AD.
Sorry? Did I hear right from those ladies who are talking? Emh… Change of plans !!
For safety I decide to postpone and stay in Rome; do you remember what happened? Vesuvius erupted and we have the testimony of this event, thanks to Pliny the Younger, a lawyer, writer and magistrate, who tells Tacitus, a historian, orator and senator, through letters, how his uncle Pliny the elder was died to get closer to the places of the eruption.
Unfortunately, even with Pliny and Tacitus, I was unable to speak ... But oh well, let's go on with the story.
Curiosity*: The term, "Plinian eruption", which geologists and volcanologists use to distinguish the type of eruption, derives, in fact, from the description of the poet and is currently used to indicate eruptions similar to those of Vesuvius.
In 79 AD, Vesuvius suddenly awakens after about eight hundred years of quiet and takes the Pompeians by surprise, who are unaware of the fact that Vesuvius is a volcano since it appears as a harmless fertile mountain.
Several earthquakes, due to the ascent of the magma inside the volcano, the eruption proceeds, but no one can imagine that they are the warning signs of a rash.
First phase, (according to some sources): takes place on August 24 around 13:00; a series of explosions occur that cause the emission of a column of gas, ashes and lapilli, more than fifteen kilometers high.
The cloud, having reached a certain altitude, expands and inside the pyroclasts solidify, falling to the ground, forming a copious rain of pyroclasts that covers the areas located near the volcano, in particular Pompeii.
The eruption takes on different characteristics:
the densest part of the column of gas and pyroclasts falls on itself and descends along the flanks of the volcano of burning clouds, ie flows of gas and pyroclasts having a temperature of 300-400 ° C.
One of these flows reaches Herculaneum and neighboring villages, instantly killing any form of life.
On the morning of August 25, a pyroclastic flow also heads towards Pompeii; people who have remained in the city or returned to recover their belongings, have no escape from the gas toxic (such as hydrochloric acid) that impregnate the air.
In the afternoon, following the collapse of a part of Vesuvius, the eruptive column collapses on itself and descends along the flanks of the volcano, killing the inhabitants of the countryside.
The city of Pompeii is definitively buried by a few meters of pyroclasts and the bodies of its inhabitants are incorporated by the volcanic ashes, which later solidify.
Today, archaeologists to try to save the casts left behind, have filled these cavities with plaster castings and created casts of the victims. By excavating and eliminating the layers of pyroclasts, scholars have unearthed the well-preserved remains of the city of Pompeii and have reconstructed many details of the life of the time.
And here you are told of how the events unfolded; I do not want to bore you further and therefore, let's proceed!
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Living in ancient Rome
Historical FictionMarta finds a strange contraption in the attic. It's a time machine built by his grandfather! Will it work or will it just be a prototype? Let's find out together by reading her adventures.
